When the planners don't include you in their formulas:
What Scott saw in Clayton County was a place ill-equipped for the influx of poverty. Just 10 miles south of the new condominiums in Atlanta, the county had no public housing and a few modest bus lines — a service that had started only this year, after a referendum passed. The main streets lacked sidewalks, and Scott often found herself tiptoeing alongside traffic.
“This place isn’t meant for poor people,” Scott said.
During my recent campaign for Alderman, I put forward the idea of having a Town shuttle, which would bring folks to the downtown area where they could (among other things) connect with a new bus line we had negotiated with the City of Burlington. It seemed like a no-brainer to me, but most of the people I discussed this with looked at me like I was crazy. Who's going to pay for this? Would people even use it? When I explained to them that well over 1,000 residents were below the poverty line and many probably didn't own a car (or a reliable car), half of them didn't believe me and the other half didn't seem to care. The reason I bring that up is to demonstrate that it's not just politicians who need to be educated on these issues, *everybody* does. And here's another concern I heard more than once:
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